


All Roads (Eventually) Lead to Home

by igrockspock



Series: All Roads [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-17
Updated: 2011-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:29:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war is over, Hermione goes to find her parents.  They're not where she expected them to be. Part 1 of 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Roads (Eventually) Lead to Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arsenic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/gifts).



  


189 Toorak Road of Melbourne, Australia wasn't so different from the place her parents had left behind, except that inside, it was clearly just a house, not a home.  The white carpets and tile counters were clean, just like Hermione's mother always kept them, and there were pictures of her parents spread across the window sill above the kitchen sink.  But the worn, comfortable furniture in the Granger home was missing, and so were her father's shelves of leather bound books and the colorful pillows her mother had once strewn across the sofa.  It was as if the house had been decorated by someone with no warmth or personality, and Hermione wondered with a shiver what else she might have taken from her parents when she had stripped away their memories of her. Also, there was one other problem:  the house was empty.  It was clear that her parents had lived here once, probably quite recently, but now there was no trace of them inside.  Their jackets stood neatly in the hall closet, and the car was in the garage, but the refrigerator and cupboards were nearly empty. There were no traces of footsteps on the neatly vacuumed carpets.

Wand in hand, Hermione crept through the corridors of the house, the plush carpet muffling the sound of her footsteps.  The air conditioner came on with a sudden click, and she flattened herself against the wall, pressing a hand to her heart to calm its wild beating.  One by one, she opened doors and peered into closets, not quite admitting that she was steeling herself for the sight of her parents lying stiff and glassy eyed on the floor, the victims of a Death Eater's curse.  But the house really _was_ empty.  Hermione collapsed on a corner of her parents' bed and tried to think.  The Death Eaters couldn't really have found them, could they?   
   
She lay back on the bed and buried her face in the pillow.  It did not smell of her mother's favorite perfume the way it should have, but Hermione's eyes began to flicker shut anyway. She had flown here by airplane, buying the ticket with a loan from Harry, and now she was exhausted. Somehow it had seemed more fitting to travel to her parents the Muggle way, as if she was stepping away from her world and back into theirs. Well, that or she had been terrified of facing them again and had wanted her journey to take as long as possible. She rolled over on her side and discovered her mother's MacBook wedged between the bed and the night table. The sleek white casing reminded her of her last summer before Hogwarts, when she had written a three-page letter explaining why a computer of her own would increase her scholastic productivity. Then her Hogwarts letter had arrived, and the computer had been forgotten. Her parents had given her one – the newest and best Mac – for her thirteenth birthday, and it had lain quietly in the bottom of her trunk, buried under piles of spell books, until she had used it to practice formatting hard drives. The spell that erased her presence from the house wouldn't apply to Muggle technology, so she had had to manually erase herself from her parents' computers. It was the only time she had allowed herself to cry.

Her mother's diary was open on the computer screen.

 _Leaving for Bangkok in an hour. Mum always said that a vacation never fixed anything, but I hope that she was wrong. All year, I've felt lost. No, worse than that, empty. Like I've lost something important – vital, even – but I don't know what it is. Wendell won't admit it, but I can tell he feels the same way. I thought moving to Australia would fix it, but it hasn't. I've got a nice husband, nice house, nice car, but it's not enough. And I keep thinking that maybe Melbourne just wasn't far enough. Or different enough. It's missing something. Back when we were young, Wendell and I always said we'd take off and see the world, and then something happened and we didn't. But for the life of me, I can't remember why not, and neither can he. It's insane, to be forty-one, move to Australia, and then leave for Bangkok on a one-way ticket. But I keep thinking, I've already come this far, why not go a little farther?_

Bangkok. Her parents were in Bangkok. She leaned backward, letting her head hit the wall with an audible thump. They were alive. But who had she turned them into?

To be continued... 

**Author's Note:**

> Photo of Hermione's parents' new home from an Australian real estate website.


End file.
